Sigma 12-24 aka Popeye aka The Really Freakin Wide Lens

Sigma 12-24 lens

A long time ago, digital SLR’s were only available with a crop sensor. This meant that if you wanted to go really wide, you had to get a REALLY wide lens.

One of the only options around was the Sigma 12-24 3.5-4.5 lens. I had it for a year or so and was very impressed with the image quality and build. The only problem I had with it was the front lens element which made me extremely paranoid when walking around in a crowd. Seriously, no wonder the lens is nicknamed “Popeye”. Back when I was still shooting with a crop sensor, I thought the lens was very wide. Check out the examples from the coronation of King Sihamoni in 2004.

Students gather at the coronation ceremony of King Sihamoni

RCAF soldiers stand at attention at the coronation of King Sihamoni

Nice and wide at 18mm’s.

The other day I happened to be at the Phnom Penh Post dropping off some photos and ran into Heng Chivoan, one of their shooters. He had the Popeye sitting on his 40D and let me put it on my 5D.

What a difference 6mm’s makes…

Phnom Penh Post offices

Rick Valenzuela hard at work at the Phnom Penh Post

Heng Chivoan on his laptop

a 12mm shot of Rick Valenzuela 3 inches from his chin

Why lifehacker rules

Check out lifehacker’s great list of free software for your Mac.

I pretty much use all of these apps as they are just great for keeping your life a bit simpler.

If you haven’t already, download Quicksilver. It will make your life so much easier.

Phototuts: A great photography tutorial website

I stumbled upon this site about a month ago and was pretty amazed on how many great tips it has.

Every photographer needs to start somewhere. The best aspect of the site is that it is very broad in the style of photography that it covers. Theres a great DIY tip of softboxes, a quick guide to shooting in natural light and a weekly photo critique where the community critiques a user submitted photo.

Phototuts is part of the Plus education network which offers great tutorials on web design, mobile photo development along with others.

Now, all tuna from the gulf coast comes pre-packaged in oil

Just one of the funny yet sad tweets coming from a fake BP PR twitter account. I have been following this twitter account for the past 2 weeks and noticed today that they now have over 110,000 people following them.
Also, I don’t know if this is an indication of how cynical people are or if they just find that laughter is the best medicine to deal with this ecological disaster but 7 times more people would rather read fake PR than the official line from BP.
Street Giant have Leroy Stick, the man behind the BPGlobalPR account.
Check out the amounts on twitter by searching these accounts listed below:

Fake account: BPGlobalPR

Real account: BP_America

Real account: Oil_Spill_2010

Wonder what other fake accounts we are going to see pop up.